Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Remind Me, Why Do We Put Up With This Garbage from China?

Imagine a drug so potent and dangerous that the US government limits production of it to just 19 grams, barely half an ounce.

Now imagine why someone in China tried to smuggle a kilo of it into Vancouver. A kilo, enough to kill every person in Canada with enough left over to wipe out most of Scandinavia.

Early this summer, the Canada Border Services Agency intercepted a kilo of a drug called carfentanil in Vancouver. It was in a package sent from China to a Calgary address. CBSA, the RCMP and the Vancouver and Calgary police forces conducted a joint operation and arrested the addressee, Joshua Wrenn, 24.

For veterinary purposes, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration allows an annual carfentanil production of just 19 grams — a little over half an ounce.

...The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reports that “Carfentanil is said to be 10,000 times more potent than morphine.” As a dust, it could be inhaled or attach to mucous membranes, like the tongue, with almost instantly fatal effect.

Chinese opioid manufacturers can evidently produce large quantities of carfentanil without running into occupational health and safety issues, and they know how to mail it to Canada without leaving a telltale trail of dead postal clerks, parcel handlers, and CBSA inspectors.

“The Department of Health recommends that first responders and health professionals who treat an individual suspected of taking the drug, or encounter the drug itself, should use extreme caution. Carfentanil is absorbed through skin contact, inhalation, oral exposure, or ingestion, which may lead to an accidental drug poisoning.”

Worse yet, carfentanil’s effect is so toxic that one spray of naloxone isn’t enough. According to the New York Times, Ohio first responders are having to use up to four or five doses to save a single overdose case.

Don't know how much truth to lend to this, but I caught eye of a report last week that the Chinese government was encouraging much real estate investment in Vancouver and Toronto to inflate housing prices to the point that when the bubble actually did burst it could significantly destabilize our economy and weaken Canada when it came to negotiating trade and other issues. With their growing expansionist policies in Africa to secure food production and influence, their South China Sea adventures, and a military that's grown significantly in both capability and boldness, I think our, and the Americans, and much of the West's "pivot to China" is as much a a pivot away from the West and seeing power shift to Beijing and its agenda as anything else.

Then there's the opioid flood that Beijing seems to have little desire to address, something that's risking not only recreational drug users but people in need of legitimate pain management medication.

And now they want an extradition treaty with Canada so that they can pursue those they deem problematic.

I've never trusted the Chinese regime. Their abuses of their own people are manifest, legendary, and a matter of public record, and it has always troubled me no end that we've hitched our wagon to theirs for the sake of business and profit, again basing our actions on such a wrongheaded, neo-liberal notion that capitalism invariably enhances democracy and brings about positive social change. Now, it appears, that deal is beginning to bite back...

Maybe if Trudeau can free up some of those CSIS types currently spying on law-abiding Canadians for the big energy companies we can get to the bottom of just who is behind this at the Chinese end. I think it speaks volumes that our government didn't utter a peep about this to the Canadian public.